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SLIDE: Rosa Benheur is widely considered one of the most famous woman painters in the

19th century. This slide is a painting of her by another artist. She was known for her love of

animals and her painting of animals

SLIDE: One of her two most famous works is the Horse Fair. This painting led her to

achieve international fame. It’s eight feet high and 16 feet wide and is the original hangs in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Benheur studied animals very closely, taking many notes. She would go out into

livestock markets and stockyards to do her work. When she did this she would wear jeans,

which was known at the time as men’s clothing. This got Benheur in trouble with the church.

And she had to get a police permit every six months in order to wear pants while doing research.

Why did she get in trouble? She wasn’t following Deuteronomy 22:5

SLIDE: “A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s

garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.”

The issue that interests me in this story is not Benheur’s clothing; instead I want us to

think about how do we apply the Bible to our life? Do we take the Bible literally or do we take it

seriously. Will we be the type of people who will take every part of the Bible and apply it to our

life. Or will we be the type of people who learn the how to apply the Bible to our lives—we take

it seriously.

With these questions in my mind, I’m sharing the second Sunday of a Lenten sermon

series on the Sermon on the Mount, called the “Original Self-Help Book.” Each week we’re

going through the most famous sermon in the history of the world and looking at how it applies

to our life. Jesus presented a far different understanding of self in the Sermon on the Mount than

the understanding that the culture teaches. The Sermon on the Mount presents a vision of life
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that God has for the world. The question for us living in the north Metro in March 2011 is how

can apply the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to our life. When we do this we’ll live out a

different understanding of self.

To continue the theme of self-help I’d like to encourage you to get out this self-help

booklet that is in your bulletin. Each week during this series e’re sharing a self-help booklet

with you. In the booklet you’ll find a daily devotion. You’ll have readings that correspond with

the sermon. This week I gave you more detail about the twenty verses of the Sermon on the

Mount we heard today. You’ll find a place to take notes in your self-help booklet. I believe that

God will speak to you during this sermon with an idea that you will want to remember. I

encourage you to write those ideas down. And you’ll find a place for prayer requests. These

prayer requests can make a big difference in people’s lives. I want to thank all of you for

keeping my Dad in your prayers as he had hip surgery this week. On the back you can find the

different chapters in this self-help book. If you missed a chapter you can watch the sermon on

our web site—colpres.org.

The title of today’s sermon is, “You mean, I can’t do what? Anger, Adultery, Divorce &

Swearing” Right away you and I have to decide whether we are going to apply these Scriptures

literally or take them seriously. There is a difference.

To take the Bible literally means that a person does exactly what the Bible says. There’s

no interpretation—for a literalist does exactly what the Bible says. If a passage in the Old

Testament says that women shouldn’t wear men’s clothing, then that’s what should take place in

the world. To take the Bible literally a person does not try to understand the context of the

passage of how the passage relates to the overall theme of Scripture. To take the Bible literally a
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person doesn’t see how the passage teaches us how to love. If you read the Bible literally, a

person would not get angry, not commit adultery, never marry a divorced person, or take an oath.

To take the Bible seriously means we have great respect for the authority of Scripture in

our life; we learn the basic story-line of the Bible; we learn how individual passages relate to this

wider story-line; we learn the context of these stories in the 1st century and then we learn how to

apply them to the 21st century.

Let me say something that some people might take as heresy. No one takes the Bible

literally. If a person took the Bible literally a farmer would only plant six years out of seven.

According to Leviticus 25:4 on the seventh year there shall be a year of complete rest for the

land; If a person took the Bible literally no person could own a piece of property for more than

50 years. According to Leviticus 25:10 all property goes back to the original owner in the

sabbatical year which took place every 50 years. If a person took the Bible literally no prisons

would exist as Jesus said in one of his first talks that he came to proclaim release to the captives,

Luke 25:18.

The tragedy of taking the Bible literally is that a literalist is very susceptible to judging

others. This week on my Facebook page I asked if people had ever felt condemned by people

who take the Bible literally. I was surprised by the comments. One person said that he had

always felt judged by a family member because the family member didn’t think that this person

lived up to the teachings of the Bible. Another person said that they had been judged by the

Bible. Instead of being people of mercy, Christians have become known as people of judgment.

It largely comes out of the desire to take the Bible literally.

I won’t teach us to take the Bible literally. But that doesn’t mean at all that we discard

the Bible. Just because the Bible has some passages that seem downright weird to people living
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in the 21st century doesn’t discount the Bible. To use an old cliché, we don’t throw the baby out

with the bathwater.

Here at Chain of Lakes at least three-fourths of our congregation was not worshipping at

a church two years ago. When I develop sermons I operate on the assumption that many of us

know little about the Bible.

One way to take the Bible seriously is to develop an answer to the question, “What is the

purpose of the Bible?” Think about this with me. If someone asked you the question “What is

the purpose of the Bible?” what would you say.

1. The Bible is a story of God’s relationship with people

Starting in Genesis 12 God made a covenant with Abram—the rest of the Bible is a story

of how that covenant was lived out

2. The Bible through the example of Jesus teaches us about the Kingdom of God, primarily

which is about love—loving God and loving our neighbors as we love our heart. Later in

Matthew Jesus was asked the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus replied by

saying that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and to

love our neighbors as ourselves. He went on to say that on these two commandments hang all

the law and the prophets.

Notice what I didn’t say. The Bible is not a rule book for judging our life. If we do

something I don’t want us to ask ourselves—does the Bible allow this? This is the wrong

question. The Bible has rules, but primarily the Bible is not a rule book.

With this background let’s get right into today’s reading. Jesus said this:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets: I have come not to abolish but
to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter not one stroke of a
letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Matthew 5:17-18
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Jesus said he came to fulfill the law. The law here meant the 10 Commandments. Jesus

wasn’t a revolutionary in that he abolished the law. Instead Jesus sharpened the focus of the law.

He wasn’t nullifying the past—Jesus teaching had a past and a context. With the advent of Jesus

the law had a new filter—that was love as Jesus taught it.

A metaphor that is helpful for me is to think of a strainer. Think of this strainer as

representing Jesus command to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We take the

Commandments and even the 626 laws of the Old Testament and pour them through this strainer.

Whatever we have left is what we follow.

When Jesus said I come to fulfill the law, this is what he meant.

I think this is a liberating way to look at the Bible. Instead of seeing the Bible as a book

of regulations that stop us from doing what we want to do, the Bible is a book that teaches us

how to become the people God wants us to be. We can look forward to reading the Scriptures

because they teach us new lessons about love.

There are all sorts of responses and pushbacks to what I am teaching you. Some people

would call me a heretic for teaching you this. It’s not hard to figure out the pushbacks to what

I’m saying. se arguments. In my mind congregations have to decide if we want to be a group of

people who measure people’s pant length like the police did to Rosa Benheur or do we want to

devote ourselves to the main principle of the Kingdom of God.

With this perspective let’s look at these four teachings that Jesus made in this section of

the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus used a form in each of these teachings. It’s called the

antithesis. You might want to write this down. He said:

1) You have hear that it was said

2) But I say to you—Jesus applied the teaching to our heart and made it harder
3) Sometimes gave examples of how to live out his teaching
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He did this six times.

1) You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and
‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment
2) But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgment;
and …
3) Jesus taught about reconciliation.

Anger is a sign that something is wrong in our lives and in the world. Have you heard of

the expression the canary in the coal mine? Miners used to take canaries into the mine. If the

canary died, they knew that something was wrong. Anger is like the dead canary in the coal

mine. It tells us that something needs to change.

Here is where Jesus application is helpful. Jesus said if you’re angry with someone, go

and meet with the person. Being reconciled with that person is more important than offering a

gift at the altar. He wanted his followers to come to terms quickly with an accuser. He would

always want us to do this in love.

The point is not “don’t be angry.” Instead the point is, if you’re angry, use your anger as

a sign that reconciliation is needed.

I want to share a challenge with all of you. Who are you angry with? Who pushes your

buttons? I want to challenge all of us to speak to that person in love this week. Preferably do

this in person. Be honest, authentic, and loving in sharing your anger. What’s the worst thing

that can happen? You might lose your friend. But if you don’t share your anger with someone,

you’ve already lost a lot of the relationship.

Jesus went on—you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. That’s

the first part of this antithesis form. Do not commit adultery. It’s the 6th commandment. The

punishment in some places in the Old Testament for a person who committed adultery was death.
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Jesus took this commandment and applied it to our heart. He said that whoever looks at a

woman with lust in his heart has committed adultery. He went on to say that if a man looks at a

woman with lust with his right eye, he should tear the eye out.

One of the downsides of the Internet is the rapid expansion of Internet pornography. I

did some research this week. When people do a search the #1 topic is the word, “sex.” One-

fourth of all searches on the Internet are porn related. 100,000 web sites that have child

pornography. 20% of men admit to accessing porn at work. If we applied this teaching of Jesus

literally there would be a lot of men walking around looking like pirates—with a black patch on

their eye. I don’t think this is what Jesus intended.

What did Jesus intend? I think he wanted married couples to be in relationships of loving

fidelity. He would challenge couples to keep growing in love. In terms of lust I think he would

want men not to look at women or women to look at men as a sexual object. I believe that Jesus

would want churches to have ministries for men that taught men to resist pornography.

You see the difference between taking this literally and taking it seriously. If we take it

literally a lot of men would walk around looking like pirates; people who commit adultery would

be in killed. If we take this teaching seriously people would be highly developed as people.

The final teaching that I’m going to talk about today is what Jesus said about divorce.

Let’s go back to the form of antithesis. First Jesus said, “you have heard that it was said,

‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. Then he replied by saying

“I say that whoever divorces his wife except on the grounds of unchasity and whoever marries a

divorced woman commits adultery. What do we make of this?

The issue here was not divorce, but remarriage. If a man married a divorced woman he

causing her to commit adultery. If you take this literally, men would never marry divorced
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women. When I served the Presbyterian church in Plainview some folks in the congregation

identified themselves as taking the Bible literally. When I married Amy—a divorced woman—

they asked me if I was causing her to commit adultery.

Again if we take this passage seriously by putting it through the lens of love we can

develop an understanding that is healthier.

For me the issue is being careful about marrying someone who is divorced. Getting

married wasn’t for Jesus a casual act. Jesus asked his followers to treat marriage with a high

level of respect and seriousness.

I’ve shared my own story of meeting before about meeting my wife, Amy. I fell in love

with her before I even met her in person. Even though I was taken by her, we didn’t get engaged

for a year after we met, and then we were engaged for an entire year. I thought this length of our

dating gave us the opportunity to be serious about our marriage.

For me this teaching is about taking marriage seriously.

I think it’s a shame that we have stories like Rosa Benheur. The Bible is such a special

and precious book. For it to be used in such silliness is a discredit to God. I’ve read the Bible

many times. I’m reading the Old Testament this year. I know that there are sections that leave

us scratching our heads. I also believe this is the greatest book in the world. I personally have

been formed by the Scriptures. I have been inspired by the Scriptures. I believe the Scriptures

share a vision for the world that can change the world.

The world is waiting for a church of people who learn how to take the Bible seriously.

It’s waiting for a group of people who share the vision of the Scriptures in a mercifully way; it’s

waiting for a group of people who understand why the Bible has teachings about women not
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dressing up as men; it’s waiting for a group of people who can share clarity about the teachings

of the bible that are confusing. It’s waiting for you and me.